Despite the pain, Cold Cry, leaning on Noe, moved fast down the slope, calling for everyone to stop searching and head for the mountainside now.
Nobody understood what had happened, but the fear on his face and the edge in his voice said enough; he hadn't looked like this even facing the three demons alone. Whatever he'd sensed, it had to be bad. The group closed in around him and Noe and moved.
They pushed down the mountain at a near-run.
Kimura hated leaving without Eimi, but what choice did he have, with even Cold Cry running scared? All he could do was go with the rest.
Not long after they'd cleared out, a human-shaped column of water rose out of the center of the lake with a sound like a fountain kicking on.
Once it reached its full height, the water fell back into the lake, leaving only a dark shape standing where it had been.
A rustling noise spread across the water, like a school of fish crowding together, and the whole lake began to churn.
Black strands crept out from beneath the figure's feet, spreading across the surface and up onto the rocks along the shore
Those were the scratches Cold Cry had found earlier. Hair had left them.
Out in the middle of the lake, a ripple carried the figure slowly toward shore. Jet-black hair hung over its face and covered its whole body, catching a cold gleam under the moon.
It walked, unhurried, in the same direction the group had fled, leaving wet prints behind it. Its hair seemed to move on its own, spreading out ahead of it into the trees.
"The moon is a crescent, the lake water clear..."
The group was moving fast through the woods when a clear, childlike song drifted in from behind them, and every head turned at once.
The tune itself was pretty. That only made it wors; that moment should have sounded pretty.
"Di id you hear that? Someone's singing. A woman."
One of the Contestants pointed back the way they'd come, uncertain, half-convinced he'd imagined i ntil he saw everyone else's faces and knew he hadn't.
No one answered him. Everyone just kept moving.
"You think it's a signal? Maybe it's them?"
Nobody wanted to point out how strange a signal that would be.
Fujikasane Mountain wasn't big enough to get properly lost o; peoplee crossed paths on it by accident all the time. And that voice had been too clear, too beautiful. After seven days of nothing but life and death, who among them could ping like that?
More to the poin, EiEimii was the only woman left unaccounted for, and this wasn't her voice. So if it wasn't Eimi...
The answer wasn't hard to guess.
Not long after, the group reached the clearing halfway down the mountain where Kimura's team had rested on their first day climbing up Wisteria Forest at their backs as they came down.
With the wisteria behind them, everyone drew their blades and turned to face the dark treeline ahead, tense as if bracing for the worst fight of their lives.
The singing drifted out of the woods, closer now. Nobody found it beautifulanymore; it feltt more like something binding itself around their minds, the kind of sound that raised the hair on the back of your neck and put a cold sweat down your spine.
Cold Cry, Noe, and Akino stood in a line, Yuka shielded behind them.
"Listen carefully," Cold Cry said. "Whatever this thing is, it's stronger than everything we've faced tonight combined. If you can't beat it, don't try. Staying alive matters more than passing this assessment."
The words were aimed at the two beside him, but everyone heard them.
Less than half an hour left until dawn.
The singing kept closing in, and rustling spread through the tree thee same sound as the first night, when the demons had swarmed out all at once.
After several long minutes, the singing that had been getting closer suddenly cut off. Every heart in the group jumped, and the silence that followed felt worse than the song had.
"They're here," Cold Cry said quickly.
Following his eyes, everyone spotted a shape in the dark, hair falling loose and impossibly long, trailing all the way to the groun likee the hair had swallowed the person whole.
"What... what is that?" someone asked, voice shaking.
There wasn't really a question to ask. What else could it be, out here, but a demon?
"Careful!"
Cold Cry felt the danger coming a second before it hit, but his warning came a beat too late.
A strand of hair snapped around a Contestant's ankle, and with a scream, he was dragged toward open ground.
Before anyone could move, a wave of hair surged up off the ground like it had a mind of its own and swallowed him whole.
His muffled cries carried for a moment, then faded into nothing.
Kimura finally let himself believe Eimi was probably already dead.
They'd started the climb thirty or forty strong. Now, counting himself, there were eight left. Three of them, off to his right, were already backing away with their blades still draw, learly rattled by what they'd just watched.
He looked at Cold Cry's group on the other sid, all three of them, and they were deeply hurtm, but their eyes hadn't wavered once. Maybe people like that were exactly what the Demon Slayer Corps actually needed.
Something in him gave out. Between the last seven days and Eimi being gone now, he wasn't sure anymore that he was cut out for this at all.
"I'm done. Take care of yourselves."
He looked once at Cold Cry and the others, then jumped down off the slope without looking back. He walked into the wisteria, breathed in the sweetness of it, and let a tired, relieved smile cross his fac as two lines of tears slid down his cheeks.
Seven days on Fujikasane Mountain. He'd carry the memory of it for the rest of his life.
"We're out too. Stay safe."
Seeing Kimura go, the three behind him followed, dropping down the slope and into the wisteria after him.
In a blink, only four of the eight were left: Cold Cry, Noe, Akino, and Yuka.
"You three should go too," Cold Cry said. "Making it this far is already more than most can say. No one would think less of you for stopping here."
"And you?" Akino asked. "You're barely standing. You're still going?"
Cold Cry unstrapped the weighted bands from his wrists, then the weighted wraps from his calves.
The three of them stared at the pile on the groun en, twenty kilograms of dead we, in open disbelief.
Everyone knew Cold Cry was strong. But outside of Noe, neither of the others had seen it up close, not reall andd even now, stripped down like this, he wasn't fighting at full strength. No wonder it hit them the way it did.
"Unlike you three, I don't have a choice here. There are exactly two ways this ends for m: pass, or I die on this mountain."
He used the straps from his leg wraps to bind his ruined left arm against his side. It wasn't any use to him now, and he didn't need it getting in the way.
"I'm not leaving either," Noe said.
It wasn't like her to sound this certain. But these seven days, dangerous as they'd been, had shown her somethin thatt the Demon Slayer Corps might be the one place that could take her as she was, instead of treating her like a monster.
Akino glanced down at Yuka. They traded a look, and he turned back, steady. "We've come this far. Dawn's only a few minutes off. Giving up now would be a waste."
Cold Cry didn't argue. Everyone got to make their own call, and it wasn't his place to talk them out of it.
"Watch yourselves. I can't do much to help you now."
"It's fine. Don't worry about us."
He nodded, breathed in as deep as his damaged lungs would allow, gritted through the pain, and swung his blade to send a spray of ice spikes forward.
They drove deep into the ground in front of the four of them, forming a wall of frozen air at their backs, with the wisteria behind to cover them.